Incongruity

Alex Pretti had a phone in his hand and his gun in his holster.

He caught a face full of chemical irritant while trying to protect someone who was knocked to the ground from a similar fate. He was thrown to the ground, forced onto his stomach, and was being beaten in the face by the same can of pepper spray that hit him at point blank range. While this beating was going on, someone took the gun he was carrying from its holster and announced that Mr. Pretti had a gun. Ten shots then rang out, hitting a man lying prone, pinned, and incapacitated by pepper spray. He was not a terrorist or assassin. He was an ICU nurse, the same kind of person that I’ve seen countless times when visiting folks in the hospital. The same kind of person with whom we entrust our lives and the lives of our loved ones.

He was less than six months younger than me. Not that this fact matters, but it chills me to think about what it’s like for someone to needlessly die when they have that much ahead of them.

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I don’t have a snow blower. My snow removal capacity is limited to a shovel and my own limited stamina. The snowfall from last weekend’s storm was 16 inches where I live in Irondequoit, and I was very much not looking forward to digging myself out of such a monumental amount of accumulated snow. But what’s a fella to do? At a certain point, shoveling a driveway feels like digging into snow rather than removing the snow. I’m not here to complain about having to shovel. I live in Western New York and have heard rumors about snow before I moved here. I’ve lived in Wisconsin, I’ve lived in Chicago, I’ve lived in Michigan. I’ve seen snow before and I will see snow again. It comes with the territory.

But just because it’s not a surprise doesn’t mean that I have to like it.

Our neighbor, Ed, has lived in his house since it was first built. My house was built in 1970, which I say by way of providing some demographic information. Ed has a snowblower. Ed was using his snowblower to blow the snow from his driveway while I was sweating in the single digit weather. I know I’m telegraphing the end of this story, but how weird would it be if I wrote this blog post as a way of getting back at my jerk of a neighbor? What a strange use of this platform to embarrass a person who will never read this or ever meet any of you.

No. Of course not. Ed, without a hesitation or word spoken, rumbled his blower over to my side of the world and turned a 10-hour project into under an hour of work. While I am personally grateful, I know my back is even more so. It was incredibly kind of Ed to help and he has been and is a great neighbor.

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Renee Good was in her car, driving away from a violent scenario. She was in her car, parked perpendicular to the street disrupting traffic. When she was approached by the authorities she told the man who would shoot her that she wasn’t mad at him, seemingly calm. The authorities told her to get out of her car. The authorities told her to move her car. She backed her car up, giving her a greater turn radius and moved forward to drive away. As her car was passing by, she was shot three times and died. The first shot went through her windshield, while the second and third shots went through the drivers side window. The man who killed her walked to her car and demeaned her in the cruelest words possible. About a minute later, he drove away.

Her dog in the backseat of the car was unharmed, but her three children are left without a mother. She wasn’t a terrorist or assassin. She was a poet. Before her killing, she had dropped off her six year old son at school. His father died in 2023 and this boy was made an orphan while he was starting his school day. This woman who was raised in the Presbyterian tradition is now resting in the arms of her God.

She was less than two months older than me. Not that this fact matters, but it is agonizing to imagine what her family is going through as I contemplate what this would feel like for my family.

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I have a hard time reconciling these three stories. There is a better world available to us. I know this fact; I can testify to this fact. I don’t know what to do with that fact.

Peace,

Rev. Jeff Fox-Kline

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If these stories have unsettled you, you’re not alone. Sit with them. Pray with them. Talk about them with someone you trust. And if you’re longing for a place where hard questions are welcome, where grief and hope can exist side by side, I invite you to join us at Twelve Corners Presbyterian Church in Brighton. We gather each Sunday at 10:00 a.m. to worship, to listen, and to remind one another that a better world is not only possible; it’s worth seeking together. We’re saving a seat for you.